Despite its unprecedented sweep of six regions in France’s first round of local elections last Sunday, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front has so far lost election run-offs in three key regions—which it won a week ago, exit polls showed. The FN losses, the result of a rare cooperation between the Socialists and Nicolas Sarkozy’s Conservatives, have made the latter the clear winners in all three races.
President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party withdrew from two of the regions for the decisive run-off round, and called on supporters to vote tactically to keep the FN out of power.
Sarkozy’s Republicans their center-right allies took 57.5% of the vote in the northern region, where FN leader Marine Le Pen took only 42%.
In the south-east, where Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal Le Pen was the FN’s lead candidate, the conservatives scored 54.5% to the FN 45.5%, according to the exit poll.
In the eastern region, where the Socialists did not withdraw, the center right still won 48.4% compared with the FN’s 36.4 percent, according to polls.
Winning control of any region would have been an unprecedented boost for the National Front — and especially for Le Pen’s hopes for the presidency in 2017. And so these results are a huge disappointment for Le Pen, who had hoped to use her local election victories as a springboard for her presidential run and for the general elections of 2017.
The turnout in both regions was more than 61%, up significantly from the first round, in what is comparable to the US midterm elections.
These elections may spell a bitter end to the rule of the once-powerful Socialist Party, which currently controls all but one of France’s regions, but which came in third place in the first round. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s party is hoping to be the unquestioned winner in Sunday’s runoff vote.